A group of children splash around and shoot each other with water sprays, while another group plays games or swings on tire swings. All around are the cheerful laughter and chatter of campers.
Everything runs smoothly as the kids shift from activity to activity, all under the watchful gaze of counselors. It’s the second of the three weeks the summer camp is running this year, and it’s easy to assume that it’s been around for decades or is organized by a large organization.
It may be hard to believe that the popular summer camp is run just outside Chandler and was put together by triplet sisters when they were only 16.
Camp Copperhead was started by Annie, Jessie and Leah Brannon during the COVID pandemic in the summer of 2020 as a way to create jobs for themselves and do something for the community.
“There was nothing happening for us, nothing happening for kids in the community as far as summer camps and we really needed a job,” Annie said.
“And my aunt said, ‘Well you guys have a perfect place to run a summer camp, why don’t you just try it?’ And so we decided to try it.”
They got to work organizing and promoted it on Facebook just one week before hosting the first camp. Annie said they had about 12 girls. It went so well that every week after that, they hit capacity. They keep attendance at 30 kids or less per week, so that they can split them up into groups of 10 per counselor, making it easier to keep an eye on things.
The last two years of the camp -- 2023 and 2025 -- Annie has been running things on her own and hiring friends to come on as counselors, mostly because schedules haven’t lined up with her sisters. At the moment, Jessie is in Asia. Earlier this summer, Annie herself was in Africa for two months, doing a research trip in Malawi. She is entering her senior year at Brigham Young University, where she’s studying biodiversity and conservation.
The campers get to enjoy the classic summer camp experience. Held on the Brannons’ property on State Highway 18, they get to go hiking, do crafts and play water games, on top of outdoor games. They play things like Ships and Sailors or Elbow Tag -- group games that keep the kids active. Older kids get to try out fishing, while everyone tie-dyes a shirt that they get to wear on the last day of camp.
“We have a lot of farm animals, and they get to interact with animals and chase chickens and catch them and play with the bunnies and feed goats and everything like that. And it’s fun,” Annie said.
Children from all over attend. Annie said they’ve had kids from Shawnee, Edmond and Oklahoma City, as well as more local areas, such as Chandler, Prague, Meeker, Stroud, Davenport and Cushing.
They even had kids from as far away as Alabama.
“Some kids from Shawnee, like some that go to North Rock Creek, have said this is the only thing they do outside all summer is when they come to Camp Copperhead or the only time that they go hiking or that they play some of these active games during a summer,” she said.
Annie said she hopes to keep Camp Copperhead going as long as she can, though it will depend. She’s hoping to get into graduate school, though she could also be working after graduation.
“It may change if I do it next summer. And my sister is coming home from Japan (Jessie), so she may do it, also depending on her plans,” she said, adding that nothing is set in stone. However, she said she feels they’ve hit all of their goals for what they want the kids to do while at the camp.
“The original goal of camp was to just have a classic summer camp, not a super competitive sports camp or super competitive science camp or any sort of competition,” Annie said.
“We definitely have team games, but we wanted kids to feel like they could just be kids and have a typical summer camp where they do all these activities.”